In the Right Place: Yet Another Warning

At least 114 dead and dying seals have been reported found in Maine so far this August, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Experts from the Marine Animal Lifeline and NOAA are studying the disturbing situation, which has recurred from time to time since 2003.

Most of this month’s discoveries have been Harbor Seals found south of Rockland; avian flu and distemper have been found in a good number of these. Researchers at the Shaw Institute in Blue Hill blame manmade, immune-suppressant toxins, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).

These toxins reportedly are widespread in our waters and make sea mammals dangerously susceptible to diseases. Apparently, many of our seals are inundated with these toxic time bombs, even though they may look as healthy as our local seals shown here.

Reports of dead or dying seals seen south of Rockland should be made to Marine Animal Lifeline at 207-851-6625. Those seen north of Rockland should be reported to Allied Whale at 207-288-5644. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Windjammer Watch XII

This is the Bonnie Lynn becalmed in Great Cove yesterday morning waiting for a fair wind that didn’t come.

She’s a 1998 modified version of a Trade Rover Schooner, the late-20th Century working sail vessels designed by Merritt Walter.

Bonnie is 72 feet long overall and has Brigantine-like rigging that can accommodate a square sail on the foremast. She’s equipped with a 220 horsepower diesel engine and has a steel hull.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Department of Defense

Most American Crows here are still maintaining family territories that they defend against other crows. Unlike most birds, Crow youngsters often stay with their parents to defend the territory and help raise the next brood.

Soon, the Crow atomic family territoriality will disappear and those birds that don’t migrate will congregate. Many inland Crows will come to the coast in late summer and fall, seemingly sensing that impenetrable snow will not cover food-rich tidal zones.

The wintering Crow families will create roosting areas and huddle there during the cold nights. Why? The leading theory is that Crows sense their increased vulnerability in leafless trees.

Their primary predators (other than humans) are Great Horned Owls and other large raptors. Owls can see and attack Crows better during winter nights. The more Crow eyes and sharp beaks available, the better that species can warn and defend itself in winter. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Summertime

The four opening lines of a once popular song come to mind in a strange way lately:

It's summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summertime summertime sum sum summertime summertime.

This silly but melodic 1958 song, “Summertime, Summertime,” was a one-hit wonder by an obscure group called The Jamies. Here’s the strange part: the song celebrated the joys of summer’s arrival; however, many of us could use a reminder now that it’s STILL summer.

There’s often a new coolness in the air now, the fields are turning white, gold, and brown, and there’s talk about school and football. But, remember: it’s summertime, summertime, summertime until September 22. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Windjammer Watch XI

Vela is the August classroom for the Coastal Cruising Seamanship course at the WoodenBoat School this year.

She’s a 50-foot gaff-rigged sloop out of Sedgwick, Maine, that was launched in 1996.

She’s captained by Havilah (“Haddie”) Hawkins II, a fourth generation schoonerman. He designed Vela and is teaching the course.

The sloop is a broad (14-foot beam) vessel with an open deck that allows the helmsman a full view.

“Vela” means “Candle” in Spanish, although we’re not sure why the boat was christened with that name. 

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Air-Blown

Why do Double-Crested Cormorants spend more time drying their wings than other water birds?

Research has shown that, unlike other water birds, Cormorants’ outer feathers are designed (“morphologically adapted”) to absorb water and thereby repel air bubbles. This adaptation significantly reduces the buoyancy obstacle that diving birds have and allows Cormorants to dive deeper and swim faster underwater than other diving birds.

Cormorants are our most successful fishing birds, but their feathers get wetter than those of other water birds and need to be warmed and air-blown. Cormorants’ crackled blue eyes also contribute to their fishing successes – the eyes are adapted to allow the birds to see better within dark waters. See also the image in the first Comment space.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Ressurection

Much to our pleasure, we found Grayling moored in Great Cove yesterday morning. She’s the focus of many articles on boat restoration. She was built in 1915 in East Boothbay, Maine, with white oak ribbing, longleaf yellow pine planking, and a cypress pilothouse.

Designed as a double-ended fishing vessel, Grayling fished for mackerel and herring at first, but she became a sardine carrier in 1920. She trucked sardines to and from the cannery for 70 years and then was left to rot. In the 1990s, she was discovered, restored, and converted to a what she is now, a ketch-rigged yacht that sleeps 11.  The restoration work was by Brooklin's DN Hylan and Associates (now Hylan and Brown Associates).

She’s long (almost 65 feet overall) and thin (12.5-foot beam), which means she must carry significant ballast (10 tons) to militate against rolling.

She’s definitely not beautiful the way Sophia Loren in her prime was definitely not beautiful. It’s just that you can’t keep your eyes off her. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Two Mornings

We saw much of yesterday through a veil of fog and intermittent rain, which softened the glow from the fields that are thick with late summer wild flowers. The flowering yellow-golds are mostly Tansy in full bloom amid fading Black-Eyed Susans and emerging Golden Rod. The whites are mostly Queen Anne’s Lace in its prime.

This morning added sunbeams to the mix, luring the deer into the fields early to enjoy the rain-fed succulence. 

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Straps

It may be our imagination, but it seems that we’ve been seeing fewer snakes this summer, including Common Garter Snakes such as the one shown here. That snake is the most widespread and abundant reptile in Maine. (Turtles and Snakes are the only reptiles that we have.)

Maine is home to nine species of snakes and – to the tourists’ delight – none of these is venomous. (In days of yore, we had Timber Rattlesnakes.) Garter Snakes were named after “garter straps,” elastic devices once used to hold up socks and stockings. 

Adult Garter Snakes usually range in size here from 18 to 26 inches, but one Maine specimen was officially recorded at almost 44 inches. Garter Snakes prefer earthworms but will eat just about any living thing that they can get their small mouths around. The compliment is reciprocated by a myriad of larger predators that like to snack on this snake.(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Pink Passion Plant

The flowers and buds of Queen-of-the-Prairie (Filipendula rubra) are peaking into their cotton candy phase (inflorescence). This plant, also called Prairie Dropwort, was used by Native Americans as an aphrodisiac.

It’s native to the United States, but not New England, where it was introduced probably in the 19th Century. Some of it grows wild in our fields, but more forms of it are seen in gardens. The Queens soon will fade, so, we took this image to put in our stack of summer color memories that we’ll conjure back during our next gray February. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: More Fractured Thinking

How would Natty Bumppo travel the woods and waters of today’s Maine? As you may remember, he also was called Hawk-Eye in James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. It’s fun to imagine Hawk-Eye today paddling a plastic kayak rather than a bark canoe and wearing a floppy hat rather than a skin cap.

It’s more fun to imagine Magua, Uncas, and Chingachgook in spiffy L.L. Bean outfits and florescent kayaks coming to Hawk-Eye’s rescue.

There is a connection to Maine. Many memories of how Hawk-Eye looked in his wooded milieu are based on N.C. Wyeth’s fabulous illustrations in the deluxe edition of that book. N.C., the father of Andrew, worked here in the summer; Maine scenery seems to have crept into many of his woodland and river illustrations. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Inside Story

The Wild Blackberries here are starting to turn dark and ripen. The black one shown here is now extinct, but it was delicious. It looks like this year will be a good one for the berries and those willing to brave their thorny thickets to get them.

Wild Blackberries are difficult to differentiate from Wild Black Raspberries when the berries are still on the vine. However, once plucked, you easily can see if the berry’s center is hollow like a thimble (Raspberry) or “corked” like a jug (Blackberry). The Blackberry stem/cork is edible, of course.

The plump Red Raspberries in stores are not wild and propagated by birds and other animals; they’re specially bred and cultivated by fruit farmers. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Demented

It’s foggy now, as it was a few days ago when the images below were taken. Those with good eyes might see, in this image, two men in a boat:

Those from around here might even recognize Scott Keenan steering a crew member into Naskeag Harbor by instinct, after somehow mooring Scott’s Fishing Vessel Dear Abbie:. Scott beached the outboard just to the north of the Town Pier, which looked like this up close that day:

Fog, as we all know, is merely a demented air spirit that has decided to form into a cloud to make seafaring fun. A wee more technical explanation is that fog and other clouds are formed when the air is cooled enough to become saturated with water vapor, usually when the difference between the air temperature and its dew point (water-making point) is less than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Whispers of the Very Bored

As this visiting sailboat left Great Cove recently, three nearby locals – a pair of 12.5-footers and a Dory – were overheard by someone who speaks Boat. They whispered this:

1st 12.5: The one from Rhode Island’s leaving.

2nd 12.5: It’s a fair wind; wouldn’t mind going out myself.

1st 12.5: But she’s got a GREEN sail up – LOOK!.

2nd 12.5: Don’t stare.

1st 12.5: I’m talkin’ REALLY GREEN-Green; St. PATRICKS’ Green; flying LIME ……

Dory: SHUSH; she’ll hear you.

2nd 12.5 (ignoring Dory, as usual): Just peeked; she handles her color well. Remember, she’s more than TWICE our size.

1st 12.5: Now that you mention THAT, did you see how she swung and bobbed that stout stern all night?

Dory (to herself): I GOTTA get away from here!

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Code Orange

The mid-August report on the Monarch Butterfly’s comeback here is good. They’re regularly landing and taking off in the gardens and occasionally putting on mock dogfight exhibitions over the flowers.

Multitudes of their caterpillars (larvae) are grazing without caution on milkweed, perhaps sensing that their bright striping is blinking warnings to would-be predators: TOXIC>YUCK>DON’T DARE! Toxic Milkweed is the only food that the caterpillars can eat, which is one of the reasons why they are threatened.

Below, two male Monarchs work the purple Echinacea in peace. We know their sex because only the males have a dark, lozenge-shaped spot on the first vein of each rear wing.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Interlude

It’s Thursday evening (August 9) during the gossamer interlude between sundown and darkness. We’re rounding Mark Island Light in East Penobscot Bay, weaving through small spirals of light rain while dazzling Venus arises over our shoulder.

Distracting details are being smoothed away; the island is transforming into an oil painting hung just for us between sky and sea. The lighthouse, built in 1857, also is known as the Deer Isle Thorofare Light because it marks the entrance to the hidden passage through many islands into Stonington Harbor.

The Island is now owned and preserved by the Island Heritage Trust. It’s no longer occupied, but the automated lamp and fog horn still provide familiar comfort. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: High-Riding

Winslow here is a 14-foot “skiff,” a word that apparently originated as a variant of small “ship.” American skiffs usually are light, open boats designed for the use of one person or very few people; they typically are rowing vessels. (Some Mainers, therefore, call them “pulling boats.”)

Many skiffs have flat bottoms, but not Winslow; she has an elegant hull that makes her very high-riding. There is no hard-and-fast definition of a skiff. You may remember that Santiago’s 16-foot “skiff” in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea had, in addition to oars, a small sail on a removable mast that the fisherman took home at night. Winslow is part of the WoodenBoat School’s fleet, but we’ve never seen a sail on her. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Windjammer Watch X

The Victory Chimes sailed into Great Cove sunny Tuesday.

But, she had to be pushed out of the Cove by her yawl boat in yesterday morning’s haze and fog.

The 170-foot, motorless Chimes is the largest Maine coastal cruiser in the fleet and the only three-masted one. She’s now out of Rockland, Maine, but was launched in 1900 in Delaware.

She plied the Chesapeake Bay area as the Edwin & Maude until 1954, when she came to Maine and was renamed the Victory Chimes in honor of a Canadian schooner of that name that had been launched on Armistice Day in 1918. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Swarmed

There are about 5,500 species of Dragonflies and Damselflies. We’ll never be able to identify even a fraction of them and we wonder why such a large number has survived evolution.

Nonetheless, we try to learn as we see and we’ve been seeing Common Green Darner Dragonflies (Anax junius), such as the one above. It’s about three inches long and gets its name from its resemblance to a darning needle.

We're also seeing Calico Pennant Dragonflies (Celithemis elisa), such as the male above that is about an inch long. He gets his first name from his brown, black, and light wing pattern (picture a Calico Cat) and its second name because it’s one of several types of “Pennant” Dragonflies – those that perch on top of vegetation where they wave like colorful pennants.

For some reason that is not apparent, many of the smaller water-skimming cousins of the Pennants are called “Dragonlet” Dragonflies. These include the Seaside Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax berrnice) shown above. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Rattled

Deadly Destroying Angel mushrooms (Amanita virosa), such as this one seen yesterday, seem to be more numerous here this August. Perhaps it’s the unusual high humidity that we’ve been having.

In any case, this little fungus and its cousin, the Death Cap mushroom (Amanita phalloides), are the most dangerous things that mushroom-eating collectors can find in the Maine woods since poisonous snakes were extirpated from the State. Another view of the Angel:

Unless you really know your wild mushrooms, do with any white-gilled mushroom what you’d do with a rattlesnake – leave it alone. (Brooklin, Maine)